


All Cats Are Grey

by Ruuger



Category: James Bond - Ian Fleming
Genre: 1960s, Fix-It, Future Fic, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>July 1969. A moment in the life of James Bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Cats Are Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics quoted come from "In the year 2525" by Zager & Evans.
> 
> Imported (with comments) from the original Yuletide archive.

_In the year 2525. If man is still alive, if woman can survive. They may find..._

The jingle of the bell above the door and the tinny tune of the latest pop hit playing in a transistor radio greeted James Bond as he entered the Happy Camper diner. Even though it was already rather late at night, there was a long queue at the counter in the front of the room. Nevertheless the place was eerily quiet, the patrons crowding around the small television set propped on the high shelf behind the counter, their eyes fixed on the flickering black and white image.

Bond swore under his breath. He appreciated the importance of the moment, but the damned thing seemed to have driven the entire nation (and, he assumed, probably the rest of the world as well) completely mad. He pushed past the crowds until he found an empty booth at the back of the diner where the television set was not visible. His contact had chosen the diner as their meeting place, but Bond couldn't help wishing that time would have allowed them to meet on some other date. Unfortunately when the national security of multiple nations was at stake, postponing the meeting was not an option.

He had been sitting in his booth for over fifteen minutes when a waitress finally arrived at his table. She was a pretty young blonde, her hair tied back to a tight bun and her lips a ruby-red splash of paint on a pale and slightly round, almost childlike face. Her tight red-and-white uniform emphasised her full breasts, while the short skirt showed off her long legs, and Bond briefly indulged on a fantasy of what she would look like in an expensive evening dress. In the past he might have turned his imaginings into reality and asked her out to celebrate with him afterwards, but today he was determined to dedicate himself completely to his work.

The waitress, identified as Cherry Lee by the tag on her blouse, gave her a friendly smile. "Welcome to Happy Camper, sir! Would you like to try our Moonlanding Special?"

Bond smiled inwardly at the American habit of mundane commercialization of anything even slightly out of the ordinary - there was no event so small or a celebrity too insignificant they could not turn it into a commemorative dish! - before answering her.

"Just a coffee, thank you," he said. American coffee may have been weaker than he preferred, but at least in America the default drink was coffee and not the vile mudwater they drank in England.

When she came back with his coffee, Bond took out his wallet and gave her a five dollar note. "Here you go, darling," he said, handing her the money. "Keep the change and get yourself something nice on me."

The waitress let out a shy giggle as she accepted the tip, a slight tint of pink rising to her cheeks.

Bond watched her go and then dug out his cigarette case from his pocket. He tapped one out but did not light it. He watched the light reflected on the three gold bands on the cigarette and thought about the waitress. What had she seen when he had looked at him? Had she looked into his cruel blue-grey eyes and seen the merciless assassin who had taken countless lives in the service of his country, or was he to her just another lonely man trying to buy himself company with his coffee.

In his mind's eye he could imagine her chatting with her friends in the kitchen: "Look at the tip from table nine," she would tell the other girls. "A good-looking man, in a kind of Hoagy Carmichael sort of way." (Here Bond paused his musings for a second, realising that the girl was probably not old enough to even know who Hoagy Carmichael was) "But would you believe the nerve he had, flirting with me, the old goat."

The girl's behaviour, be it mostly only in his own head, had touched a thought that had been bothering him all day. He'd been off the Double-O section for almost four years now, having reached the mandatory retirement age of forty-five. He had remained at the Service, however, assigned to mostly desk duty with the occasional trip abroad to offer his expertise to some junior agent or to oversee an important operation. Those once-in-a-blue-moon field missions, together with his book on self-defense that was finally starting to look publishable, had been what had kept him in sane these last few years.

But in a year he would be fifty, facing another dreaded milestone in the life of a secret agent. May, his trusty housekeeper who despite the sundry of ailments brought on by her advanced age had refused to retire, would know not to make an event of it, but his personal secretary, damn her over-enthusiastic soul, would take any refusal to celebrate as a challenge. M would also most likely pass it with a gruff announcement that there was nothing special in aging as everyone did it, but Bond was not looking forward to the cheerful smiles and the limp handshakes from his other superiors. And the unspoken message underneath the good luck wishes and awkward jokes would be this: "Make yourself comfortable behind that desk, Commander Bond, because that's where you'll be spending the rest of your career."

Bond lit his cigar and tried to exorcise his doubts with the exhaled smoke. These missions were his chance to prove his worth on the field even without the double-O before his code number, and he couldn't afford to blow this one up because of a sudden bout of insecurity.

His involvement in his current mission had been a request from CIA. The informant he was meeting was a prominent but yet unidentified member of the New York underworld who had contacted the intelligence agency, claiming to possess information about a group of terrorists planning an attack against the heads of states of certain key nations. The informant had asked for Bond by name as her contact, despite him working for a different government. Based on CIA's knowledge that the informant was a woman, Bond was then fairly sure that it was yet another case of a romantically-minded young girl who had seen his old photos in some secret service dossier. It wasn't the first time Bond had been asked to use his charms to obtain information from a woman - he had done it most famously while trying to help Tatjana Romanova defect with what had then turned out to be a fake Spektor - but there was once again a small voice at the back of his mind that was worried how this girl would react at seeing him. What if she took one look at him and turned away, taking her information with her?

Bond grunted in disgust at his own melancholy. He was on a mission - there was no time for useless nostalgia and self-pity. He was going to do this job as well as he could, and damn the rest of his career. He could be shot within the next five minutes, and nothing else would matter anyway. And if the girl didn't find him attractive, he would find some other way to get the information out of her.

If nothing else, the mission had allowed him to again work together with Leiter, who he had not seen for most part of a decade, not since the aftermath of the Scaramanga business. Leiter - who despite his continuous efforts had failed to leave CIA behind - had also jumped at the chance of working with Bond, going as far as offering his guest room for him to stay in.

("Might as well get some use out of it and save a hotel room's worth of taxpayers' dollars while we're at it," Leiter had told him. "I don't know why I've kept this place since the wife left, seeing as it's too big for just one, but I suppose a man is a creature of habits.")

Bond glanced at his watch. His contact was almost ten minutes late. Just as he was about to signal his back-up that something was wrong, he heard a voice from behind him.

"Hello, pretty boy."

By the time he recognised the voice, she was already settling down on the seat opposite him.

She looked both alike and different as the last time he had seen her. She was wearing a a navy pantsuit cut in a masculine fashion, and carrying a small leather briefcase, and if not for the lateness of the hour, could have easily passed for a modern businesswoman meeting a client or a co-worker for lunch. Even though Bond could see the first few grey hairs streaking the jet black of her boyishly-cut bob, there was still the same mischievous look in her violet eyes.

"Pussy Galore. I see the Cement Mixers are still in the business."

"Construction as well as deconstruction these days, it would seem," she said, setting the case on the table. "I don't claim to be a candidate for sainthood, but even I have my limits."

She opened the briefcase and took out a thick envelope. "Sorry for skipping the obligatory reminiscences, but I'm putting my life on the line with this, so I'd rather have it out of the way as fast as possible."

Bond was about to tell her to wait until he could make sure the room was secure, but she interrupted him before he even got a word out.

"My girls are covering the place," she said, and then winked, her smile widening to show a row of pearly teeth. "And don't worry, the waitress wasn't one of them."

Their hands touched as she gave him he envelope. She paused for a second at the connection.

"You're holding the future of the free world in your hands, James," she said, but this time there was a serious tone to her voice.

Bond opened the envelope, careful not to reveal its contents to any possible onlookers. "Not for the first time," he said.

She smiled knowingly. "And probably not for the last time either."

She closed her briefcase, making a show of it.

"I hope you didn't get any wrong ideas, James," she said finally. "I only asked for you because you tried to save Tilly, and because I knew I could trust you. I may be working for the angels on this one, but I like to make sure that I don't end up as one myself while doing it." She stood up, raising her voice. "Girls!"

In the near-by booth, a brunette girl abandoned the book she was reading, while across the room two women who had been chatting to a construction worker suddenly stood up, much to the disappointment of their new friend.

As the girls flanked her, Pussy walked around the table to Bond. "What we had, as nice as it was..." She leaned down and kissed his cheek. "Let's just call it an experiment."

She straightened up, wrapping an arm around one of her girls. "I'll see you around, pretty boy."

The spicy scent of her perfume and the ghost of touch of her lips lingered long after she had walked away.

"Did you get it?"

Bond heard the familiar Texan drawl from behind him. He waved the envelope without a word.

Leiter took the papers from Bond and slipped into the seat vacated by Pussy Galore. As he began to study them, the crowds around the counter suddenly erupted into a roaring cheer. Bond twisted around to look behind him. Around the television, women and men were shaking hands and hugging each other. Even the man who had just been rudely abandoned by Pussy's girls, seemed to have forgotten his disappointment. One of the waitresses turned up the volume on the television to enable its sound to carry over the sounds of celebration.

_...one giant leap for mankind..._

Bond turned to face Leiter again. "It's all going to change," he said.

Leiter grinned, seemingly only realising what had happened. "Tell me about it. I heard Kissinger is already planning on a military base on the moon."

Bond was quiet for a moment before speaking.

"What say we let the boys and girls at Langley find out if this is legitimate, and have a night on the town," he said. "Just you and me and the best drinks this town can offer."

Leiter laughed and reached to slap Bond's back. "Just like in the old days, eh, Jimmy-boy? I like the way you think. I'd been hoping to show you around the old Apple again some night."

He slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket and then hooked his arm with Bond's. "Do you think that Mr. Big's place is still around?"

They both laughed, and Bond allowed Leiter to lead him out of the diner, comforted by the fact that even in the changing world, some things were constant. And maybe sometimes change could even be for the good.

_...so very far away, maybe it's only yesterday... In the year 2525..._


End file.
